Krieger, Delores (1921– )

Krieger, Delores (1921 )
Delores Krieger was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and educated
at New York University (B.A., 1960; M.A., 1962; Ph.D.,
1967). Krieger became a professor of nursing in the Division
of Nursing Education at New York University and burst into
public consciousness in the late 1970s as the advocate of a
somewhat traditional laying-on-of-hands technique as an additional
tool for nurses in their treatment of patients. Krieger had
become intrigued by the work conducted by Canadian cancer
researcher Bernard Grad in the 1960s with healer Oscar Estabany.
Grad published some of the most impressive data in
parapsychological literature on the effects of psychic healing.
Krieger decided to test Grads findings, which had been conducted
in a laboratory on plants and laboratory mice, on
human beings in a hospital setting.
In 1971 Krieger set up a program with Estabany and discovered
that his healing touch appeared to increase the presence
of a protein pigment in the blood of the initial patients with
whom he worked. The change, confirmed in a second series of
experiments, led her to begin teaching the technique to the
nurses in her classes. She referred to the laying-on-of-hands, a
term that has significant religious connotations, as therapeutic
touch, a more nonreligious designation. Kriegers work, while
presenting little new data to parapsychologists, was of significance
because it spread parapsychological knowledge into an
established field.
Sources
Krieger, Delores. Healing by the Laying-On of Hands as a
Facilitator of Bioenergetic Change The Response of In-Vivo
Human Hemoglobin. Psychoenergetic Systems 1 (1976) 121.
. Therapeutic Touch The Imprimatur of Nursing.
American Journal of Nursing 75, no. 5 (May 1875) 78487.
Leaders in Education. 5th ed. New York R. R. Bowker, 1974.